How To Overcome Multiple Sources Of Truth To Streamline Your Content Workflow
Today’s digital marketing landscape has seen an explosion in digital content production - from images and videos to graphics, whitepapers, presentations, and infographics.
All of this which is essential in today’s day and age in order to build a strong brand image.
But, let's face it - managing and organizing all of these assets can turn into a major hassle - especially for companies operating in multiple global markets. Like most of the largest manufacturers and retailers we know today.
With different employees in charge of organizing vast amounts of digital content, companies often end up working in silos across departments and software solutions.
This creates a disorganized mess of digital content spread across various storage solutions, making it tougher than usual to maintain control over the total brand image.
And, as the volume of digital content grows, it becomes increasingly difficult to find and reuse existing material, leading to wasted resources and, as a result, missed opportunities.
To prevent this chaos and maintain control over the corporate image, companies need to manage multiple sources of truth effectively.
In this article we discuss 5 best practices for dealing with “multiple sources of truth” when it comes to your content.
Table of contents:
How to manage multiple sources of truth
Implement a digital asset management system
Use metadata to tag and classify assets
Establish clear data governance policies
Automate data validation and verification processes
Regularly audit your data sources
Conclusion
How to manage multiple sources of truth
From implementing a centralized data management system to conducting content audits, here are our 5 best practices when it comes to managing your content across “multiple sources of truth”.
Implement a centralized digital asset management system
Managing multiple sources of truth across multiple channels can pose a major challenge for businesses.
Fortunately, digital asset management (DAM) systems provide a reliable solution that help streamline your typical day-to-day content management process.
DAMs will consolidate data from various sources into a “single source of truth”, making content management simpler and more efficient.
How?
By offering a centralized location for data storage and access, along with standardized data formats, naming conventions, and access controls.
The result?
Eliminating confusion about which content and data is right to use - ensuring that everyone on your team(s) are working with the same set of data and content.
All in all: Establishing a single source of truth for all your digital assets can help eliminate inefficiencies in content production.
The reason being that everyone on your team has access to the same approved versions of content, stored in a secure, centralized location. Which means you no longer have to worry about misplaced content scattered among shared drives, random folders, or personal employee computers.
Use metadata to tag and classify digital assets
One way companies can manage multiple sources of truth is by using metadata to tag and classify digital content.
Quick refresher: Metadata is information that describes a digital asset, such as its type, origin, and intended use. And by tagging and classifying digital assets with metadata, companies can create a taxonomy that makes it easy to locate and manage assets.
For instance, an image library might be classified by metadata such as the photographer, date taken, and location, making it easier to find specific images.
By implementing this kind of system, businesses are essentially classifying and categorizing all their valuable assets into a coherent and well-organized structure. This ensures that companies can easily access and utilize their digital assets whenever they need them the most.
The benefits of spending time setting the right metadata and building a digital asset taxonomy are manifold:
Firstly, it enhances the filtering, searchability, and discoverability of digital assets, including those that users may not be aware of. This makes it easier to find the exact asset needed, saving valuable time and effort.
Secondly, metadata provides flexibility by allowing businesses to use categories or metadata, or even a combination of both, to classify digital assets. This customization allows companies to create a taxonomy that fits their specific needs and preferences.
Lastly, metadata facilitates a seamless transition from folder structures to categorization, making it easier for users to navigate and access digital assets.
Establish clear content governance policies and procedures
Managing multiple sources of truth and content spread out across different platforms can be challenging for companies, but establishing clear content governance policies and procedures can help.
By defining roles and responsibilities for content management, plus establishing guidelines for content quality, security, and privacy, companies can ensure that everyone understands their responsibilities.
In addition to that, content is managed consistently and effectively.
Picture the following scenario:
Imagine you're a production manager at a manufacturing company. Your day-to-day activities consist of juggling multiple product lines with unique specifications and instructions.
But since you don't have a centralized system in place, your team members mismanage these details scattered across different remote locations.
The result? A lack of coordination which leads to inconsistencies like wrong materials, outdated instructions - a real pitfall for quality control.
To solve this problem, your company can establish a digital asset governance policy and use a DAM system to streamline the asset management process.
The policy can define roles and responsibilities for asset creation, establish guidelines for asset quality, and ensure that all assets adhere to brand standards. AKA better brand compliance overall.
Implement integrated tools
Another way to manage multiple sources of truth is by connecting all the systems that handle your content together. AKA content integration tools - that allow for the consolidation of content from different sources into a single source of truth.
With the help of automation through integrations, errors can be reduced, and efficiency can be improved.
These types of integrations also ensure that content is updated in real-time, providing the most up-to-date information to everyone.
One example of such a tool is the integration of DAM with a Content Management System (CMS) like Optimizely.
This integration provides a seamless web experience with powerful search, filtering, and navigation options for digital assets.
Approved assets such as photos, documents, videos, and images are easily accessible from within Optimizely, allowing web editors to work efficiently and scale across multiple websites simultaneously.
With the DAM Optimizely extension, web editors can easily pull videos and images from the DAM into Optimizely web experiments.
They can also personalize visual experiences and test which visuals resonate best with their target audiences. Additionally, the DAM displays all images and videos in optimized formats and sizes automatically, which improves both site speed and SEO.
Conduct regular content audits
At this point you understand that managing multiple sources of truth is a draining task for companies.
Especially when it comes to maintaining an up-to-date digital asset catalog.
It’s crucial to ensure that all assets are accurate and relevant, and that they align with the overall content strategy of the organization.
This is where content audits come in.
By conducting regular content audits, organizations can keep track of the content they have across different platforms, identify any gaps or duplications, and ensure that their content is up-to-date, accurate, and relevant.
A content audit can also help companies identify opportunities for repurposing or updating existing content, reducing the need for new content creation and ensuring efficient use of resources.
Let's say a company has recently undergone a rebranding and has updated their logo and brand colors.
However, they still have old versions of their logo and outdated brand colors on some of their marketing materials. This is a surefire way to cause confusion among customers and inconsistency in branding.
By conducting a regular content audit and using a DAM with version control features, the company can ensure that all marketing materials feature the latest logo and brand colors, presenting a consistent and professional image to customers.
Why you should use Digizuite DAM as a single source of truth
Using a single source of truth for digital content can improve the content lifecycle, from tagging the relevant metadata to automating the processing of assets, archiving content, and removing underperforming content.
It also ensures better access rights and permissions, protecting your brand and maintaining consistency across channels.
Here are the key benefits of using a tool like Digizuite DAM:
Boost productivity by eliminating manual tasks and working more efficiently with rich media content.
Employees can streamline the editing and distribution process for each digital asset.
Corrections are made from a centralized source, minimizing errors and speeding up time-to-market.
In a fast-paced world where agility is vital for success, your company can swiftly respond to market demands and deliver those timely, personalized customer experiences.
Conclusion
Juggling digital content from multiple locations can be overwhelming.
That’s why companies should look to a couple best practices in order to start managing - or dealing with - the multiple sources of truth of all their content.
In this article, we outlined 5 ways companies can manage multiple sources of truth when it comes to their content:
Implement a digital asset management system
Use metadata to tag and classify assets
Establish clear data governance policies
Automate data validation and verification processes
Regularly audit your data sources
It’s time to centralize your digital assets and simplify management with a DAM solution - which is the most reliable choice for a single source of truth.
Interested in learning more about how your organization can benefit from Digizuite DAM?
Get in touch with us today.
